Mystery of the Broken Statues

A group of crooks visit a series of stores specializing in china and statuary. They pay the proprietors for simple animal statues and then smash them. Eventually, they come up with a series of simple objects: a key, a cow, and so on. Kent and Lois know what is going on but since they are wrecking their own property, the law can't touch them. Lois gets the idea to purchase some of these objects and finds the key, but the crooks kidnap her and take the key. Once Lois disappears, Kent/Superman try to piece together what little evidence they have to find her.. This smashing of statues was the basis for the plot of one of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The conclusion is far fetched at best. Let me ask these questions: how do you know a cow represents Moo and how does one know where the pluses and minuses go?